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SNL Offers Solution to Barack Obama’s Second Term Blues (+video)

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President Obama’s second term troubles are becoming part of the cultural landscape — witness a comedy bit on last night’s Saturday Night Live.

SNL ran a parody television ad for “Paxil,” an anti-depressant designed to be “strong enough for an embattled second term.”

The ad, featuring Obama impersonator Jay Pharoah, lists a number of “symptoms,” including Benghazi, the NSA, the IRS — and, of course, “Obamacare website problems.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Will Democrats Forgive Obama for Blowing His Second Term?

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Photo Credit: mediaite

Photo Credit: mediaite

Before the confetti settled on election night in 2012, President Barack Obama’s administration and supporters were ready to get to work. As a number of media outlets observed – or warned, depending on your perspective — second-term presidents usually have a short window to achieve significant legislative accomplishments. Between 12 and 18 months into a second presidential term, the window closes. Exogenous events or increasing excitement surrounding the next presidential contest overtake the current president’s ability to capture the attention of the nation and, with them, the Congress.

Now, nearly nine months into the president’s second term, Obama is already developing the symptoms associated with lame duck syndrome. Most of Obama’s predecessors who were not wrestling with an unpopular war or a debilitating scandal had already or were on track to achieve their legacy accomplishments by this point in their second terms. But this president seems to be captive to events. Never having had the best relationship with Congress, Obama’s every effort to pass major legislative reforms has been stymied by unwilling allies and unhelpful adversaries. Furthermore, the president appeared to lack concentration. Before the debate over this reform or the other was complete, the president had shifted focus to the next all-consuming crisis. As a result, Obama’s political capital is today greatly diminished.

The president’s second inauguration and his last State of the Union address contained a laundry list of progressive legislative objectives; a higher minimum wage, universal pre-school, immigration reform which includes a pathway to citizenship, and a parade of infrastructure projects. But Obama’s most pressing objective, the project which he marshaled the most emotion advocating for in his January address before Congress, was the passage of stricter gun laws. Obama’s domestic agenda had been derailed just weeks prior by the horrific massacre of children and teachers at a Connecticut school. The minds of his base of Democratic supporters were myopically focused on the need to do something in response.

The president and his allies in Congress spent precious weeks focused on enacting new gun laws in spite of polls which showed voters did not view new gun laws to be a priority. In the end, there would be no new federal gun laws – the political support simply was not there.

What was probably the most achievable reform, the overhaul of the nation’s immigration system, was sacrificed in the process. Obama engaged the Congress too late to enact a reform that Republicans came out of the 2012 election cycle believing was in their best interests to support. A compromise may still be reached, but Obama’s opportunity to muscle through Congress a reform which prioritizes a pathway to citizenship over stricter border enforcement has passed.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Fall from Grace Sets a Scary Precedent for Future Presidents

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The increasing lawlessness with which President Barack Obama has been acting in his second term is not going unnoticed.

In fact, in a strong rebuke last week to the unilateral actions being taken by the Obama administration, a federal appeals court came down hard on the administration’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission by ruling that delaying a decision on a proposed nuclear waste storage facility was in violation of federal law. In the majority opinion, the judges declared that the administration was “simply flouting the law,” and that President Obama “may not decline to follow a statute or prohibition simply because of policy objections.”

President Obama’s fall from grace as the candidate elected to rein in executive power in 2008 is more than tragic – it sets scary new precedents for the behavior of future presidents from either party.

Just take for example how President Obama has selectively enforced his own health care law:

In 2011, the Obama administration unilaterally ended the CLASS Act – a long-term care insurance plan included in ObamaCare that proved to be unworkable. Congress would later pass a repeal of this program, but it still signaled a disturbing beginning to the President’s pattern of selectively enforcing his law.

Read more from this story HERE.

Will the U.S. Even Survive Obama’s Last Term?

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Photo Credit: WND

The rash of scandals facing Barack Obama and his administration in recent days has some people wondering if the president can survive his full term through January 2017.

Britain’s Telegraph newspaper is even running the headline: “You have to wonder: Will Obama see out his full term?”

But U.S. radio giant Rush Limbaugh says that’s the wrong question to ask.

“That’s not the question. The question is: Will America last through Obama’s full term?” Limbaugh said on his program Monday.

He continued:

Will the country survive the implementation of Obamacare? Will the country survive all this spying and all this data collecting? Will the country survive amnesty, will the country survive every plan this man’s got? That’s the question. The question is not will he serve out his second term ’cause that’s a no-brainer. Yet the UK Telegraph, ’cause they live in the real world and think, my gosh, the population of any country learning this about their president, they’d be livid. Not here. Not here. The racial component alone is not gonna permit it. It’s not gonna allow it. That coupled with the basic ignorance of the low-information voter.

There’s no real uptick on jobs. There aren’t any careers being created. People have lost jobs. Jobs are vanishing. Taxes are going up, skyrocketing high. The divide between rich and poor is only gonna get worse. Obamacare’s gonna be fully implemented. If it is, folks, 20 grand for a family to be insured? Then we’re talking immigration, amnesty, 11, 12 million people. Look at what’s on tap. If Obama could he’d wipe out the Second Amendment, if he could. You know who he is; I know who he is; you know where he’s headed. Everybody in this administration’s headed the same way. Look at the IRS scandal. Look at what the FDA is doing and the EPA and the autocratic-like, dictatorial regulations coming out of the various branches and cabinet positions of this administration, and the question is not is Obama gonna survive. The question, will America as founded.

Read more from this story HERE.

Penny Pritzker: Obama’s Worst Insult to His Left-Wing Base

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Photo Credit: breitbart In a crowded field, Chicago billionaire, bundler, sub-prime banker and union buster Penny Pritzker is clearly the worst nominee that President Barack Obama has chosen for his second term cabinet.

Though the position for which she has been nominated, Secretary of Commerce, often goes to a presidential crony or political insider, Pritzker would exceed all her predecessors and peers with her shocking record of cronyism and failure.

Pritzker ran Superior Bank into the ground by dealing in sub-prime mortgages. As Breitbart News noted recently, the bank’s depositors lost $6000, on average, and the taxpayers got fleeced–but the investors got paid out first. Pritzker recently served on the board of the Chicago Public Schools during a period of abject educational failure, and earned a bad reputation with labor unions both there and at her family’s Hyatt hotel chain.

Read more from this story HERE.

Huckabee, Bolton: Obama Will Be Ousted Over Benghazi

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photo credit: gage skidmoreBy Jonathan Easley. Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said on his radio show Monday that President Obama “will not fill out his full term” because he was complicit in a “cover-up” surrounding the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Libya.

“I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term,” Huckabee said. “I know that puts me on a limb, but this is not minor.”

“When a president lies to the American people and is part of a cover-up, he cannot continue to govern,” he added. “And as the facts come out, I think we’re going to see something startling. And before it’s over, I don’t think this president will finish his term unless somehow they can delay it in Congress past the next three and a half years.”

Some Republicans have maintained that the administration has not been forthcoming in the circumstances surrounding the attack, pointing to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who went on Sunday news shows and argued the attacks were a spontaneous reaction to an offensive video. The administration later admitted Rice’s claim was made with insufficient intelligence, and labeled the event an act of terror.

On Monday, House Republicans released portions of an interview with State Department whistle-blower Gregory Hicks, who took over as the top U.S. diplomat in Libya after Stevens was killed.Read more from this story HERE.

John Bolton: Benghazi Could Topple Administration

By Bill Hoffmann. The mushrooming Benghazi scandal could potentially lead to the unraveling of the administration of President Barack Obama, says John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

“This could be a hinge point for the Obama administration. It’s that serious for them,” Bolton told “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.

Bolton made his remarks as Congress prepares on Wednesday to interview at least three witnesses about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya.

One witness, Greg Hicks — the embassy’s No. 2 official — has said everybody knew the bloodbath, which ended in the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, was a terrorist attack.

This despite the White House initially claiming it was an impromptu protest against a blasphemous YouTube video. Read more from this story HERE.

President Obama’s Second Term Shaping up as a Train Wreck

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Photo Credit: APSuccessful presidential second terms have been hard to come by since the end of World War II. Dwight Eisenhower signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act and dispatched federal troops to escort black students to public schools in Little Rock, Ark., but then came Sputnik and the 1958 recession. Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of Watergate early in his second term, Ronald Reagan was distracted by Iran-Contra, Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives, and George W. Bush was preoccupied by the economic collapse of 2007 and the Great Recession that followed.

So perhaps no one should be surprised that President Obama’s prospects for his second term took a beating in April. Between the growing consensus that implementing Obamacare is a “train wreck” and confirmation that his administration is preventing Benghazi massacre survivors and whistle-blowers from testifying before Congress about what really happened in Libya, the outlines of a second-term collapse could take shape in the next several weeks.

A portent of trouble ahead came early in April when Time magazine’s Joe Klein, normally a reliable Obama enthusiast, warned that “we are now seeing weekly examples of this administration’s inability to govern.” Then the Obamacare train wreck meme flashed across the headlines when Sen. Max Baucus, one of the health reform law’s chief sponsors, told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that “I just see a huge train wreck coming down. You and I have discussed this many times, and I don’t see any results yet.” Despite Baucus’ subsequent efforts to walk back his comments, the “train wreck” quickly became a staple of political conversation across the ideological and media spectrum, fueled by growing evidence that health insurance premiums for millions of Americans will soon skyrocket because of Obamacare.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Press Conference: ‘I’m Still Relevant’ and ‘It’s Everyone Else’s Fault’

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller President Obama: I’m still relevant

By Glenn Thrush. If ever 47 minutes illustrated the frustration, tantalizing promise and ambivalence of a second term, this was it.

President Barack Obama, marking the 100th day since he delivered an ambitious inaugural address brimming with expansive plans, sparred with the White House press over a succession of issues over which he has conspicuously clipped control — from his response to the “game-changer” revelation that Syrian government forces used sarin gas, to the failure of his gun control push, to his continued efforts to shutter the Guantanamo Bay detention facility over the objections of Congressional Republicans and Democrats.

“Mr. President, you are a hundred days into your second term…my question to you is do you still have the juice to get the rest of your agenda through this Congress?” asked ABC’s Jonathan Karl — eliciting a surprised chuckle and “goll-y” from the commander-in-chief during a Tuesday morning press conference in the White House briefing room.

“You know… as Mark Twain said, you know, rumors of my demise may be a little exaggerated at this point,” said Obama, who seemed a lot less lighthearted than during his sharp-elbowed stand-up routine at the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday. Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Blames Everybody

By Neil Munro. President Barack Obama spent most of his surprise April 30 press conference on the defensive, blaming the Senate, budget cuts, Republicans, Syria’s dictator and much else for the shaky start to his second term.

He had nothing major or new to announce, and no theme or message to steer media coverage.

About a third of the way through the press conference, Obama responded to a question about his political clout by saying sardonically that “as Mark Twain said, rumors of my demise may be a little exaggerated at this point.”

“In the Senate, this habit of requiring 60 votes for even the most modest piece of legislation has gummed up the works there,” he complained. Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Won’t Finish His Second Term Without The Bottom Dropping Out

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Peter Schiff says the sequestration flap is much ado about nothing, characterizing the $85 Billion in cuts as “trivial.”

According to Schiff, we are headed for an economic crisis worse than 2008. He believes our whole economy will topple.

What is allegedly at stake is the vulnerability of the dollar. He maintains that we have learned nothing from the last crisis and continue to repeat the mistakes of the past.

What does it all mean? The bottom will drop out of the economy become Obama is finished with his second term. That’s Schiff’s prediction.

See video:

H/T WesternJournalism.com

Inauguration Day: Obama Vows Aggressive Second-Term Agenda

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WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama began his second term Monday by setting an agenda for the next four years built on bedrock Democratic social policies, in a provocative speech coming at a time of deep partisanship in the capital and lingering economic uncertainty across the country.

With specifics not usually offered in inaugural addresses, Mr. Obama promised to preserve government health-care programs, expand rights for women and gay couples, and press for gun controls, overhauls of the tax code and immigration laws, as well as climate-change measures.

His priorities sent a message to Washington’s leaders that he is looking beyond the fiscal battles set to dominate the coming weeks, while signaling to the nation that he sees a large part of his legacy to be advocacy for underprivileged Americans.

“For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it,” Mr. Obama said in a 15-minute speech that drew repeatedly on the opening phrase of the Constitution.

Mr. Obama laid out a governing agenda rooted in Democratic policy goals and equal rights, citing Seneca Falls, N.Y., Selma, Ala., and New York City’s Stonewall Inn, birthplaces of the movements for women’s equality, civil rights and gay liberation, respectively. “That is our generation’s task—to make these words, these rights, these values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American,” the president said.

Read more from this story HERE.